Linux Mint Forums

Forum rules
There are no such things as "stupid" questions. However if you think your question is a bit stupid, then this is the right place for you to post it. Please stick to easy to-the-point questions that you feel people can answer fast. For long and complicated questions prefer the other forums within the support section.Before you post please read how to get help

rivenathos wrote:When you use LMDE, you are now in the Land of Debian, not the Land of Ubuntu.

Really, switching the Ubuntu font to Sans or changing the size from 11 to 10 will make a difference.

On the updated isos...Clem had added the proper patching that ubuntu uses (and gives it that excellent font rendering)...that is the iso i installed from (64 bit version) and the font rendering is as good as it is on ubuntu or the ubuntu based mint main edition....no tinkering needed!

I do kick up the fonts by 1 size though in my Chrome Browser (which makes many pages slightly larger for my old tired eyes...).... So while it's debian...it now renders like Ubuntu! (best of both worlds)

I did use the ubuntu fonts on my Chrome web browser for awhile (requires the ubuntu fonts extension on Chrome) but after awhile i went back to the normal Chrome fonts...I do always install the ms-corefonts before i even add in my Chrome Browser, however, and it looks fine with the default Chrome fonts...

runbei wrote:Hate to say it, but after running the scripts and restarting, fonts are still awful in OpenOffice 3.2.1 Debian as supplied with LMDE. What to do? What to do?

Yup, they do indeed although I haven't run the script since recent updates to LMDE should have accomplished the same thing as the script or so I'm told. To be honest about it OpenOffice looks rather awful all around, buttons and all. I think the best theme integration I've seen so far is in LM 10 KDE.

"Humph. Choice, it is the quintessential Linux delusion, simultaneously the source of it's greatest strength, and it's greatest weakness." (All apologies to The Architect)

With Subpixel Smoothing turned on, the fonts only looked decent in a very small range of zooming; at other zoom levels they looked very heavy, almost like boldface, very hard on the eyes. With the new settings, fonts look readable at all zoom magnifications.

sgosnell wrote:Another option is to remove OpenOffice and install LibreOffice. It's now the default office suite, I think, and it's certainly in the repositories.

I gave LibreOffice an - admittedly brief - try but went back to OpenOffice because a feature that's critical for me was crippled in LO - the ability to assign keyboard shortcuts. It was turned off by default. A bit of searching revealed that I could turn it on by choosing to activate "experimental features" (or similar wording) under Tools > Options. But then it still didn't work correctly. My question: why is this feature "experimental"? - It's been working perfectly in OpenOffice for at least eight years!

Don't get me started about OpenOffice/LibreOffice development. Linux desperately needs a GREAT word processor that everyone can easily use, especially when they're coming from MS Word. To take one example of where OO breaks that bridge - the Track Changes feature, which is absolutely required in many working environments - is completely useless in OO, because after 5-7 pages of editing with changes hidden, editing slows to an unbearable crawl. And who in God's earth would want to edit with complex changes displayed? Also, and this is a killer: Track Changes in OO tends to inter-mix changed text with the original! Completely useless.

Okay, since I have gotten started - why on earth doesn't OO provide a simple way to find and replace line endings, similar to replacing ^p in Word. This is an extremely useful feature, yet in OO you have to use regular expressions - and if and when you do succeed in understanding how to replace line endings (very complex, and instructions are confusing and semi-hidden), you can't put them back in again if you change your mind.

In general, using regex for replace is just fine - for techies. But the lack of basic functions that operate in a simple way for end-users is just plain nuts.

Finally, OpenOffice desperately needs a big AutoCorrect library, similar to Word's, which is wonderful.

I wrote a 340-page book in OpenOffice. I loved its stability, which was far better than Word's, especially for editing big docs. But the formatting features are a bit tough - I lost a lot of hair figuring out how to create chapter headers, first chapter pages, etc. So - a great engine under the hood, but much that needs fixin' above.

sgosnell wrote:Another option is to remove OpenOffice and install LibreOffice. It's now the default office suite, I think, and it's certainly in the repositories.

LibreOffice is currently not in the LMDE repositories unfortunately although by what I've read a Debian bug report has requested that LibreOffice be added to the "Squeeze" backports repo sometime in the future.

"Humph. Choice, it is the quintessential Linux delusion, simultaneously the source of it's greatest strength, and it's greatest weakness." (All apologies to The Architect)

Sorry, LibreOffice is in the Sid repository, not Testing. I went to Sid some time ago. It looks better to me, and I prefer it. It's possible to install both and compare them side by side, if you want. You can get a .deb file from here if you're using Gnome, or from there navigate to the KDE version if that's what you're using.

runbei wrote:I wrote a 340-page book in OpenOffice. I loved its stability, which was far better than Word's, especially for editing big docs. But the formatting features are a bit tough - I lost a lot of hair figuring out how to create chapter headers, first chapter pages, etc. So - a great engine under the hood, but much that needs fixin' above.

Absolutely! LaTeX would be ideal. Book design is an art that's far beyond me, and it would be wonderful to find a beautiful LaTeX book-formatting template. But, so far, I've had no luck - there seem to be hardly any LaTeX book packages, even ugly ones. And it's doubly frustrating because a Web search turns up some gorgeous designs created by in-house designers for publishing firms - and they aren't giving away the code.

howdy to everybody else - played with few other distro's but Mint LMDE 64bit is what got loaded on the rebuild for the Mrs's.; did a dist-upgrade, looks like LibreOffice replaced OpenOffice - "OK" with me.

jcoleman wrote: howdy to everybody else - played with few other distro's but Mint LMDE 64bit is what got loaded on the rebuild for the Mrs's.; did a dist-upgrade, looks like LibreOffice replaced OpenOffice - "OK" with me.

It did for me as well but after digging through synaptic I found that it left most of the OpenOffice directories and files. I had to run the following to get rid of them:

One other thing I noticed is that the upgrade removed the spell checking dictionary that's required for OpenOffice/LibreOffice from LMDE as well so spell checking in Writer and the other LO programs no longer works. I fixed that by installing the correct (locale) "MySpell" dictionary from Synaptic and that solved that problem. Just letting you know.

"Humph. Choice, it is the quintessential Linux delusion, simultaneously the source of it's greatest strength, and it's greatest weakness." (All apologies to The Architect)